Edmonton’s first municipal election with parties closes with mixed results
By Sara Sheydwasser on December 18, 2025
After Edmonton’s first election with municipal parties, two councillors with Better Edmonton have stepped away, leaving only one candidate on council affiliated with the party. Edmonton’s only other party, The Principled Accountable Coalition for Edmonton (PACE), had none of its candidates elected this year.
Last year, Alberta passed the Local Authorities Election Act and the Municipal Statutes Amendment Act. The bills allowed for local parties in upcoming municipal elections across the province. Parties had to register locally and could have no affiliation with any provincial or federally recognized parties.
“People were angry with the series of tax increases city council imposed,” says Doug Main, co-founder of PACE. “The opportunity to create a political party to bring those people together […] couldn’t be ignored.”
PACE was the first party to successfully register in Edmonton.
Source: City of Edmonton by Sara Sheydwasser“It was a long process,” says Main. “It had never been done before.”
But the idea of parties at the municipal level wasn’t embraced by everyone.
“The public didn’t want them,” says Duane Bratt, a political scientist from Mount Royal. “Many of the top candidates in both Calgary in Edmonton were not associated with a party.”
Neither of the mayors elected in Calgary nor Edmonton has a party affiliation.
Bratt also noted that candidates running within a party are able to accept more in donations, with one donation given to the individual and another to their party. Bratt pointed to this as a reason for two successful candidates leaving Better Edmonton post-election.
“Even though you won as a member of a party, you may have only joined because of those financial benefits,” Bratt says, “there’s no financial benefit now.”
But, Alberta isn’t the first province to run a municipal election with parties; Vancouver has allowed parties since 1903 and Montreal officially recognized parties in 1980.
“The provincial government seems to want parties but […] it takes time to develop a party brand,” says Bratt.
“Even in those places like Vancouver and Montreal, [… the parties are] very volatile and the names come and go depending on who the mayoral candidate is.”
Better Edmonton was backed by mayoral candidate Tim Cartmell. Cartmell sat on city council from 2017 to 2025, being beaten by mayor-elect Andrew Knack this year.
PACE did not run with a mayoral candidate at the helm, which Bratt cites as a potential for the party not having any candidates elected, but the two parties ran on similar values.
Main says PACE ran on the core values of “fiscal prudence, business-friendly, community focus, fact-based decision making and a practical approach to solving problems that face the city.”
Better Edmonton’s website says its “focused on restoring safety to our streets, respecting your tax dollars, and building infrastructure that works,” alongside “get-it-done leadership.”
“We were more or less operating in the same political environment and the same political spectrum,” says Main, continuing that both groups were “accused of vote splitting.”
While PACE didn’t have any of its candidates elected to council, Main doesn’t consider the party’s first election a complete loss.
“The people who got elected are doing the same things that produced all the anger and frustration in the first place,” says Main. “So yeah, we’re gonna keep going.”
Better Edmonton did not respond to our request to comment on the future of their party at the time of publishing.
Bratt predicts parties will remain dysfunctional at the municipal level.
“Municipal government structure is completely different from a parliamentary system so trying to graph parties onto a parliamentary system doesn’t make sense,” says Bratt.
“I still don’t see how parties are effective in Alberta,” says Bratt, “[but] the province seems to want to give it another try.”